No, it´s due to the fact that instincts (as defined by gcb) don´t really work with dates and most other fruits. A true instinctive stop would be a taste change from pleasant to unpleasant.
Some things are just as simple as they seem to be.

Things are perhaps not so simple.

These large rations of dates (or other dried or sweet stuffs) can be explained by several factors:

1. Dates can be processed, for example heated to be dried because fresh dates have strong tendency to rot. Dried fruit denatured by heat are no longer recognized by the normal alliesthesic mechanisms, so taste stop signs are virtually non-existent. And even in case the dates haven’t been heated, if we ignore the gut signals (feeling of satisfaction, fullness, etc..), which often require rehabilitation, we consumes immoderate quantities.

2. There may be at a lack of awareness of our own perceptions of taste. In this case, as Susan said, we must learn to recognize  the weak  (faint) signals that are still visible.

3. But it is also quite possible that large quantities of dates or other sweet products are useful and even necessary in the beginning to unlock metabolic situations. A seemingly unreasonable amount may simply reflect a major need of the body, for example to reconstruct what a massive consumption of rice or other processed starches could have caused. When you need to renovate a house, you must also bring exceptional amounts of brick or cement, much more than in everyday life: it is not a sign of madness of the workers, but rather the symptom of intensive work. Even the discomfort following the digestion may be the signal for a big job of the immune system (eg feelings of disgust, allergic reactions, etc..) and it’s important not to conclude too quickly to a nuisance.

Given the confusion sown by the culinary practices in the functioning of the  metabolism and immune system, all three phenomena can even be superimposed. To see clearly in each case there’s only the long-term observation. The body must move towards a better general health, welfare and endurance must recover, the disease symptoms disappear, etc.. It may take a long time, because we do not rebuilt a body in a jiffy.

For example, in the early years, I could sometimes consume kilos of honey or dates with nothing to stop me at a "normal" amount. But this did not happen all the time, proof that my body knew exactly to open or close its intake valves. But over time, these "therapeutic diets" became more and more rare. Now the first bites of the same products are often as delectable as before, but stopping occurs in inescapably after very small amounts (a few bites, of course not every day).

This suggests that these mechanisms are perfectly regulated and are in no way uncontrolled skidding. Beginners panic, because their considerations are based on dietary standards; but these are meaningless, since they are only average values thus inherently incapable of responding to individual cases. Needs vary greatly from an individual to the other and from a moment to another, especially  after the  havoc  wrought by  years  of denatured nutrition.

So beware: do not conclude too quickly, the body has its reasons which reason knows nothing about...

Best regards
GCB

Quote from Kurite
Thank you very much, its amazing that a test like this was done and still no one knows of instinctotherapy. If people knew of things like this then raw paleo and anopsology would sky rocket in popularity.

On the opposite, it’s the publication of the hopes instinctotherapy provided about AIDS healing by the French media that caused the tidal media and judiciary wave which destroyed it... The movement had grown up from year to year, the press was at first very friendly, the public increasingly interested. Then a newspaper article written by Anne-Marie Casteret, a former medical student turned to journalism, created panic. She described the instincto as a cult, myself as a dangerous guru. All the other media had no choice but to follow, fearing otherwise to be blacklisted in turn. That is how new ideas are being murdered in France, a  country proudly claiming about being a heaven for freedom of expression...

Quote from Susan
It would be interesting to know if anybody of this group has continued instinctive raw eating. Comby himself doesn't live instinctive raw anymore, does he?

The campaign of vilification of instinctotherapy ruined  all  the motivations of  these  people. Comby himself, fearing for his own reputation, has done nothing anymore after writing his book 'Nature against AIDS'. The document quoted above remained unchanged, despite a direct contact with Professor Gallo who said it was interesting and recommended further study on a larger number of cases. The patients were subjected to such pressures from family, social, medical and even legal sources that they have all abandoned instincto-nutrition, despite the dramatic results they had generally achieved. Result: they no longer kept in touch with us and probably most of them died.

This sad experience shows how our society is locked in its paradigms. AIDS has been a form of compulsory slaughter, a human sacrifice to the goddess medicine, homosexuality being the great scapegoat. The vaccine, which we are still waiting for, is the only magic formula agreed to dismiss the condemnation. Since a few years, the tritherapies became  the offering  made to the Gods in hope they’ll grant a reprieve...

In this context, it is even more striking that Dr. Luc Montagnier, the great French discoverer of HIV, now recognizes the truth I was trying to claim more than twenty years ago: the solution is on the diet side! Viewed from an therapeutic angle, eating better can strengthen the immune system and ward off infectious diseases, the true causes of the alleged lethality of the virus. It would be more effective than current treatment for reversing the epidemic in Africa for example, the only obstacle being the fact that raw paleo instinctive nutrition does not allow commercial profits...





Regards
gcb

Quote from: GCB on September 17, 2010, 05:48:59 PM
Hanna, Paleophil, Your responses are always based on the assumption that we can explain everything with current knowledge.
Quote from Paleophil:
-- I don't know where you got that idea. I don't believe we will EVER explain everything with current or future knowledge. As a matter of fact, I think not knowing everything is part of the joy of life!

Very good philosophy! However, almost each of your lines is to ask theoretical justifications for observed facts. Theoretical justifications are always based on existing knowledge.

-- So not believing that we will ever explain everything is one of my fundamental viewpoints, but don't worry about my views right now. I'm not interested in my views at this time (and you're getting them wrong anyway), nor in propagating them, whereas you are an international exponent of anopsology and using the alliesthesic mechanisms such as taste, smell, texture, and pleasure/displeasure, yes? I'm interested in learning about your views. How can I learn about your views if you get distracted trying to guess what my views might be? It's up to you whether to answer or not, of course, and thanks for sharing what you have so far.

I'm not trying to call your beliefs into question, I try to let you see that you constantly refer to a knowledge system: eg recommended carbs ratio in various diets, assuming that the rate of carbohydrates can obey to a particular standard, that this standard is probably lower than that of a diet like instincto, etc.. That’s a whole frame of notions borrowed to the prevailing  knowledge system. Hence the misunderstanding between us when I try to explain that the instincto is to obey the body language (pleasant and unpleasant sensations), to observe what nutrition is being set up without any preconceived idea about the ideal food components and for only basic premise (which is especially obvious) that the culinary art enhance flavors, so may push to eat products that we would not consume otherwise.

Experience shows that all fruits work very well on the instinctive and metabolic points.
-- OK, and again, who's experience are you talking about?

The instincto experience (short and long term observation of people of every age, from newborns to elders applying the instincto rules), an experience about the abolition of culinary arts etc. that you can do as anyone can. Moreover, my collaborators and I have done in the 60s and 70s a lot of experimentation with hundreds of animals, mostly mice. It very clearly showed the noxious effect of cooking, wheat, corn and milk of other animals species, but veggies and not too selected fruits did not cause the same problems. These experiences can also be quite easily reproduced.

The fruits grown in South-East Asia are in general particularly well suited...
-- All right, you've promoted the fruits of South/Southeast Asia several times now--and that is based on...?

I do not promote South East Asian fruit: the instincto emits no a priori for or against a particular natural product. Simply, the observation fairly consistently shows greater attraction for some fruits, regardless of any theoretical bias. I never claimed to explain the why of such fact. On the contrary, you seem contesting the adequacy of fruits in the name of theories that appear questionable (alleged impossibility of a genetic adaptation to Asian fruit).

I personally feel that the current species distribution results of a sort of split of what could have been the wild before the onset of culinary arts and agriculture. Cooking greatly limits the consumption of fruit for the benefit of grain (because with cooked grain there is no barrier against instinctive nutritional overload, thus a massive excess drastically impeding the consumption of fruit). Most varieties of fruit were then abandoned, the primeval forest largely destroyed by slash and burn....
-- So you apparently see "the primeval forest" as somehow important, yes? Do you believe that a critical point in human dietary evolution occurred in this primeval forest and was it a tropical forest in Africa? How long ago was this primeval period and how long did it last, do you think? How did you first learn about it?

I do not know and it doesn’t particularly interest me, especially because it is impossible to know the past of the multiple genes constituing our genome. The hypothesis of an incomplete adaptation to the culinary arts is in itself an attempt to explain the observed phenomena, and the theory is built upon this hypothesis is a heuristic designed to better examine the reality, not to validate or condemn any diet.

That is why I prefered to question the body and what remains of our genetic programming.
-- OK, so human body/biology and genetic programming are important, eh? When and where did this genetic programming occur? Was it during the time of the primeval forest you mentioned above?

Important? Let's say rather interesting. But unknowable, thus unusable to derive reliable diet rules.It can only serve as an afterwards explanation.

Let’s assume that the alliesthesic mechanisms are mistaken with a kind of fruit to which we would not be adapted: we will observe then immediately either a poorly regulated consumption, so either overload or nutritional deficiencies, digestive and metabolic or immune or nervous problems, perhaps also a sensory blockade to this fruit while it might be useful. In short, any malfunction.
-- So if I experience any malfunction with a fruit, are you saying that means I'm not well adapted to it?

Probably: it is the most immediate explanation. I would especially try to develop a rule that tends either to exclude it should it be really harmful, or to better recognize the body signals emitted about it.

It is in any case a bit naive to believe that the current system of knowledge to which you refer should explain everything.
-- I believed that nothing could explain everything long before you joined this forum, GCB. What is this "current system of knowledge" that you speak of?

As said above, all the knowledge you refer in each of your arguments. We're never really aware of being locked in a paradigm that builds and guide our reasoning.

It was precisely in putting this system in question that I was led to focus on the observation of the body’s behavior...
What aspects of "this system" did you question?

All about nutrition principles, starting with the presupposition asserting that a system is the sum of its parts, or that we can know the body needs, or that a morbid symptom is the sign of a disease, or that animal milk is good for health, or that man is made to consume grain.

-- Do you ever question your own views or put them to the test and how?

I've ever done it, always, and I am ready to question everything if any observation or a new discovery warrants it.

-- Have you changed any of your views since La Guerre du Cru was published (was that in 1985)?

Yes, about the danger of too much meat from domesticated animals.

Have you published any writings since then?

My website.

…the influence of culinary and agricultural artifices
-- How do you know they are artifices and what preceded them?

It is true that the question arises. One might imagine that cooking art is part of nature and that it has no harmful effects. One can also imagine that it was invented during the last millennias and it poses problems for our metabolism. One can still imagine that the organism has found ways to solve or minimize these problems. The only problem is none of this is fairly safe to infer a specific diet and secure its beneficial effects on health.

So I proceeded in the opposite direction: as an experiment I removed all culinary artifice and observed what happens, then presented the instincto as an experience that everyone can do on his own body, with as a warranty the that a number of pioneers practiced for many decades with excellent results. I have made known the results, simply because everyone has the right to know, but always said that I can not predict the results on a time scale longer than the personal experiences already made. I have built the theory afterwards as a confirmation, or because it's interesting, and also for educational purposes, because many results are surprising and inexplicable by the generally accepted theories.

It’s possible that the health conditions could be even better by excluding certain varieties of fruit, but the criteria of balance that I have set are so precise that it doesn’t seem significant.
-- What are these "precise" criteria of balance that you refer to?

I have already spoken about it several times: it is mainly about the criteria concerning quality of digestion, self-regulation of inflammatory tendency (disappearance of all inflammatory pain, a phenomenon that medicine has not yet linked with nutritional balance, and the absence of foodborne immune disorders – which you don’t seem to grasp the significance).

-- You write about fruit quite a bit. Are you personally a big fan of fruit and do you love it's taste? How much fruit do you eat each day? What is the longest time period you go without fruit in a given year? Do you think that every human being should eat fruit?

The principle of the instincto leaves to everyone the freedom to feel in his/her body its own needs. If I teach something, it is precisely to get rid of any preconceived ideas in order to be capable of listening well to our body. Experience shows then that everyone without exception (except extremes pathologies) is automatically led to consume fruits. The opposite would be quite surprising. But then to impose the consumption of a certain amount of fruit to each particular individual would contradict the very foundations of the method.

In any event, I would say that the supply we currently have and which includes all available plant and animal varieties (with the rules of caution put in place facing the highly modern selected varieties) is an excellent approximation of what might be an ideal food environment.
-- Would you provide a list of staple foods and their sources that you would include in this "ideal food environment" (for a theoretical example: "Cavendish bananas purchased from a farmer's market")?

Anything you like, as found in nature, unprocessed... Just avoid dairy, cultivated grain, fruits too artificially selected and loaded with pesticides.

OK, that's fine, and can you then explain why your posts are dominated by advocacy of tropical fruits with little note made of people who don't fare well on them? Are posts about cautions re: fruits for some, and about meats and fats and other foods to come soon?

A key point should be understood: those practicing an unbalanced or intoxicating diet can no longer bear fruits, especially the fruit best suited to the organism. The paradox stems from the fact that the better a food meets the needs of the body, the most reactions of detoxination it triggers. There is thus a constant misunderstanding in the reactions’ interpretation. Only long-term observation allows to distinguish between a direct nuisance and a useful reaction (eliminated toxins produce symptoms of intoxination when they are released into the blood).

But you told us that an instincto diet is typically a high carb diet. You even presented a statistic to prove that. It´s impossible to eat a high carb diet when you only eat 12 wild cherries (as Susan did) per meal and you would have to eat huge amounts of wild banana or wild durian (described by Inger here: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/explain-instincto-diet-fully/msg38010/?topicseen#msg38010) to get sufficient sugar for a high carb diet.

If Susan could eat 12 wild cherries only that day, it’s likely that she was definitely in overload of sugar. So, she has offset the earlier overload, which was probably induced by too much selected fruit and a lack of vigilance on her part. It is precisely this type of experiences that helps to show imbalances developing under the influence of various factors, and to correct our behavior: that’s what I call the learning or rehabilitation of our alimentary instinct in the environment we have.

As for affirmation that instincto “is typically a high carb diet ", on what base do you define a standard rate? You apply an assumption of normality whose value isn’t based, AFAIK, on any figures or serious arguments. I rather think that carbs, lipids and proteins ratios that the body signals drive to and are corroborated by very strict balance criteria (including the absence of inflammatory tendency), allow defining of this normality. And coincidentally, the numbers we get are very close to the recommendations given by nutritionists and food repartition of primates in nature. I’m more wonder about low carb diets: on what base the proponents of these schemes justify such practices; has there been enough time to assess what long-term effects there might be; what are the theoretical arguments, etc.?

That´s not right. Even in the German Wikipedia you can read that they can be eaten raw (by everyone) when they are fully ripe: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochbanane

Don’t play with words. Once cooking bananas are ripe and overripe, they actually lose the rough taste making it seemingly inedible. What interests us here is that this unpleasant rough taste of incompletely ripened bananas may disappear completely according to cravings. I saw people eating green bananas, absolutely inedible for me and other guests, while they feasted and swallowed massive amounts for several days. Then it happened that I found myself delicious a small amount of green bananas. That finally convinced me that a foodstuff inedible for some may be edible for others. The same experience happened with raw potato, tasting almost always hateful besides cooked food, but occasionally delectable in the instincto context. This happens with many wild stuff: rough and bitter as long as there is any nutritional overload, they completely change their taste and texture when the body really needs it.

Fact is that no ape species is even remotely as picky re fruit and greens as we are. Our pickiness in this respect would have reduced our chances of survival drastically and would probably have rendered survival impossible in the long run, provided that raw wild fruit (and/or raw wild greens/plants) were our primary food and fuel source, as you suppose.

Again, I think your representation of the problem is incorrect. Our gluttony comes precisely from the fact that we denature food (processing and artificial selection): then we can eat excessive amounts, which actually affects our health and our lifespan. The phenomenon does not exist with products consumed in natural form. The practical difficulty comes from the fact that we have only artificially selected varieties.

Example: since recent decades, growers produce selected blueberries, larger and therefore easier to harvest, but also easier to eat (otherwise, consumers would buy less). The result is that we tend to eat much more of it than woods blueberries. But the drift can be compensated if one is aware of the bias; we just got to be more sensitive to changes in taste and sensations of fullness. I would say that monkeys are more exposed than we are to this kind of excess: if they are offered selected products, they will also be misled by unusually appealing flavors not varying sufficiently clearly to unpleasant, and they don't have the intelligence to control the slippage.

The instincto is precisely to use what’s left still of our instinct to recognize appropriate foods and amounts, compensating drifts induced by artificial selection with some rules. Experience repeatedly shows that this approach achieves a balance far superior to that provided by any nutritional science, knowing that the needs vary constantly from one individual to another and from one moment to other. Everything else is just speculation.

Hanna, Paleophil,

Your responses are always based on the assumption that we can explain everything with current knowledge. The biological (and geological) reality has consistently proven to be much different from what is believed at a point in the historical advancement of knowledge. That’s why I am very leery of all the arguments that can be done by applying the laws of evolution to what we believe known about the history of our genome.

Experience shows that all fruits work very well on the instinctive and metabolic points. The fruits grown in South-East Asia are in general particularly well suited, but other fruits found in other parts of the world are also suitable. True, it’s surprising that the organism meets the same criteria of proper operation with Thai jackfruit and with Swiss Alpine foothills blueberries. However, experience shows that it is the case, and this remains the key point.

I personally feel that the current species distribution results of a sort of split of what could have been the wild before the onset of culinary arts and agriculture. Cooking greatly limits the consumption of fruit for the benefit of grain (because with cooked grain there is no barrier against instinctive nutritional overload, thus a massive excess drastically impeding the consumption of fruit). Most varieties of fruit were then abandoned, the primeval forest largely destroyed by slash and burn (think about what is happening in Madagascar or in other regions where the need for daily cooking fuel directly generates desertification). Hence, it’s by coincidence that such ethnic group retained this or that fruit species, and that we found each fruit in a habitat we end up to believe primitive because we don’t really know what happened previously. It is therefore unnecessary and unproductive to ask detailed questions about the origin of our nutritional trends and dangerous to infer from this type of speculations the usefulness or nuisance of this or that regime.

That is why I prefered to question the body and what remains of our genetic programming. Let’s assume that the alliesthesic mechanisms are mistaken with a kind of fruit to which we would not be adapted: we will observe then immediately either a poorly regulated consumption, so either overload or nutritional deficiencies, digestive and metabolic or immune or nervous problems, perhaps also a sensory blockade to this fruit while it might be useful. In short, any malfunction. But the criteria of good performance are very accurate (much more than with processed food!) and the absence of disorder in the short and longer-term is a good guarantee of health.

The fact that we cannot explain why our primate’s genome seems adapted to fruits originated in regions where none of our ancestors lived can come from a variety of reasons: migration still unknown, either of fruit species or of primates, presence in our genome of characteristics prior to the occurrence of such species of fruit but which predisposed us to consume it, rules of harmony as yet unknown (perhaps related to the self-organized systems) determining a match between the evolution of food species and the predator species... maybe other explanations which nobody has yet thought about.

It is in any case a bit naive to believe that the current system of knowledge to which you refer should explain everything. It was precisely in putting this system in question that I was led to focus on the observation of the body’s behavior, that I discovered the significance and working conditions of the alliesthesic mechanisms, the influence of culinary and agricultural artifices and nutritional balance criteria as established with unprocessed foods.

It’s possible that the health conditions could be even better by excluding certain varieties of fruit, but the criteria of balance that I have set are so precise that it doesn’t seem significant. In any event, I would say that the supply we currently have and which includes all available plant and animal varieties (with the rules of caution put in place facing the highly modern selected varieties) is an excellent approximation of what might be an ideal food environment. Nothing prevents to further improve things, but to do so we must not rely on grand arguments whose foundations remain speculative, but rather to additional observations – eg light disorders induced by this or that variety of fruit.

So are you saying that during some "second step" of evolution that humans became adapted to eating tropical fruits with a South Asian emphasis?

No! I'm talking about the second step in the instincto approach: the first is the empirical step (notice that the foodstuff taste changes when they are unprocessed) while the second step is the theoretical interpretation (this could be explained by the fact that the human genome is not adapted to the organoleptic properties modified by different culinary arts or agriculture).

OK, so you do see some value in an evolutionary biology explanation for how humans became adapted to certain foods, yes?

The theory is of course interesting. The issue here is to distinguish an approach based on a theory from which we define a diet versus an approach based on observations from which we draw a diet and a theory.

In fact, observation and theoretical interpretation are rather inseparable. But it's another thing to declare that men is not adapted to fruit because the fruit did not exist in nature and thus implement a zero carb scheme, or start by observing for years the alliesthesic phenomena and physiological responses on a variety of foods to extract invariants from (eg: the denatured products are no longer properly controlled by alliesthesic and metabolic mechanisms) and define a diet (in which these alliesthesic and metabolic mechanisms function correctly) while trying to explain things by a genetic theory. The second way avoids relying on errors of archaeological or evolutionary type.

-- Ah, would you call yourself an empiricist?

I’m trained in both experimental physics and theoretical physics, but I have always been very careful about the reliability of theories. Physicists are particularly well placed to know that a model of explanation is noting more than a MODEL of explanation, and that one should never take theories for absolute foundations of reasoning. Everything we think we know about the origin of food plants and origin of our genes is highly doubtful. It can be used afterwards to try to explain the empirical results. It can also be used as heuristics to feed the experiments, but never as a basis of reasoning – especially when it comes to stick to a diet that can have all sorts of health implications.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but you don't seem to be directly answering Hanna's question, GCB, because whereas you write this:

You also wrote this in which you suggest that even Europeans' bodies are better adapted to tropical climates and in which you recommend tropical fruits, with an apparent emphasis on South Asian ones, are better than temperate fruits:
Why the seeming contradiction and why so much emphasis on tropical (particularly South Asian) fruits?

Well, we don’t understand each other: I did not need the hypothesis of an original paradise to build the instincto, because it is built from empirical observations on the functioning of alliesthesic and metabolic mechanisms, regardless of such hypothesis. But that does not prevent the observed results to be interpreted in a second step in terms of evolution and genetic adaptation.

The concept of genetic adaptation has been especially useful to me for explaining the shortcomings of alliesthesic mechanisms with food processed by the culinary arts. But how this genetic adaptation to different varieties of fruits was carried out is quite indifferent to me. As already stated many times, our genome has been able to collect data in many very different circumstances, as it dates back to immemorial time, long before primates appeared (we still have the same genes as the bacterias for a variety of proteins structures of our cells, for example).

On the contrary, your argument is based on assumptions about the ENVIRONMENT in which man would have set up its genome, which makes it very risky. We know almost nothing about the exact conditions under which our ancestors were able to spend the tens of millions of years whose memory was added to previous data of our genome: there were all kinds of migrations, environmental changes, climatic hazards about which lack of knowledge prohibits any safe deduction. I prefer to proceed by empirical observation as a first step, even resorting to hypotheses in a second time to explain these observations because this approach is much less random than the opposite course.

The wild banana reportedly tastes bad and bitter.

Such considerations do not take into account the alliesthesic mechanisms: wild fruits often appear inedible when tested next to the ordinary cooked food. Why? Because food preparation can violate the "instinctive judgments" and lead to a constant overload in all kinds of components, including calories. The wild fruits, however, corresponds exactly to the genetic programming of the senses and seem therefore inedible, simply because the alliesthesic mechanisms work correctly with primitive varieties. Failing to realize this leads to think that the wild stuff is definitely inedible while it suffices to wait until the culinary overload fades to discover the real flavor of wild products. I would bet that the wild bananas you provided these excellent photos shall be excellent to my taste. This is already the case for "cooking" bananas, which seem rather inedible beside cooked food, but become better than current usual bananas after a certain time of instincto.

And Iguana, ask Orkos why they don´t sell, for example, wild dates! They know wild dates!

Doesn’t it look simple? But wild dates are not grown and it is very difficult to find people willing to harvest them. Moreover, they have a less pleasant taste to standard dieters than improved varieties, so it is difficult to sell them to others consumers than long term instinctos and therefore difficult to recoup costs. Orkos does at least seek varieties as little selected as possible to integrate into their sales program which includes about twenty varieties (not only hardliners instincto clients must be satisfied, but also the much more numerous others who prefer the selected strains). But for other fruit, especially tropical fruits, Orkos’ search for wild varieties is constant: for example cempedaks are during part of the season harvested in the primeval forest. And they are much better to the instinctos’ taste than cultivated more selected varieties for example from Vietnam. This is also a point that must be considered: the wild fruits of the temperate land (apples, pears, corms) are often much more inedible than tropical fruits in the wild (cempedak, jackfruit, coconut, durian, avocado, etc.). This would be a reason to think that we are better adapted to tropics than to temperate regions

I cannot believe that an instincto in whatever wild environment would manage to eat as much sugar as he does in the civilised world.

It depends which instinctos we talk about. Your overall impression is probably distorted by different bias.
1. A long term instincto does not eat so much foods high in sugar.
2. The high consumption of sweet foods observed in the early days have obviously a therapeutic function.
3. Defective supplies (moreover from temperate regions) may push to over-consumption.
4. Selected modern fruits actually induce over-consumption.
5. The natural environment as one think of it does not correspond to what could be a natural environment inhabited by homo “preculinaris”, because man has abandoned all kinds of fruit that became less palatable as a result of overloads induced by artificial food processing, and these fruits being no longer consumed, their seeds no longer had the same chance of reproduction.
6. To get an idea of what could be the natural environment inhabited by homo “preculinaris”, we can go see the primeval forest where primates fairly close to us live, except that the fruit multiplied by spontaneous spreading of their seeds are not the same  that suits the human palate.

We must remain very cautious in this kind of considerations. Personally, I prefer to look at what the instinct leads to eat (avoiding the culinary art and agriculture as much as possible, which is already a good approximation) and health outcomes. If a person consumes three kilos of jackfruit per day and gains weight while all previous treatments had not allowed her to do so, I tend to conclude that this apparently excessive ration is her real needs, even if the nutritional science is unable to give an explanation. If someone eats 500 grams of comb honey per day (natural and from unfed bees to avoid any deterioration in taste) and then this consumption is interrupted because the same honey taste has changed, as well as that during this period of apparent overload nutritional balance criteria were met (eg the absence of inflammatory tendency), I deduce that this massive supply of sugar had a reason for being, rather than going into all sorts of arguments about adaptation to a primitive environment – which do not stand on any concrete basis.

Gcb, but you postulated elsewhere that a balanced (Instincto) diet is usually a high carb diet with much fruit. Doesn´t this imply that we must have adapted to an environment in which edible fruit was abundant or at least not scarce?

Once again, I do not need an original paradise hypothesis to build the instincto theory: just watch on one hand the instinctive attractions and on the other hand the results on nutritional balance. Taking into account the olfactory and gustatory attraction/repulsion, repletion and other alliesthesic perceptions as well as interpretations under the rules of instincto helps to ensure an extremely accurate nutritional balance, verifiable in terms of the inflammatory tendency – as I have already explained (such accuracy could only be obtained with fasting). Experience shows that the proportions of fruit, vegetables, oilseeds and animal products correspond closely to what is observed in apes. We can therefore say that it works, and that’s the principal.

Now, what can we deduce about the existence of an "original paradise" where all the fruits of our dreams would have been found? Not much, because the programming of our genes took place over very long eras during which our ancestors have known all sorts of different vanished environments leading each to other various genetic properties that have thus been able to accumulate in our genome. To get an idea of these primitive surroundings, the best indication is given by the few locations where the hand of man has yet set foot, for examples in such biotopes of bonobos’ in Africa and orangutans’ in Borneo or Sumatra.

What I know, for example through a small survival expedition without fire or culinary arts in Borneo attended by my younger son, is that the orangutans find (and maintain in spreading the seeds) in their habitat a broad range of wonderful fruits perfectly suitable to humans, provided that they have not their taste distorded nor their body saturated by the effect of culinary arts. It is likely that forests inhabited by our distant and exctinct hominids ancestor resembled those environments and counted tree species better adapted to their organisms through the spreading of seeds, so even more appealing to the senses and more favorable to their metabolism. We understand that this environment would have significantly changed ever since mankind cooks its food and is no longer interested in the same fruits as in the original context. Hence the current state of the natural environment, terribly poor in fruits edible to humans.

All plant foods contain some toxins and in varying degrees. They wouldn't survive long in the wild if they didn't.

Exactly. And the predators of these plants wouldn’t survive either if they had not set up appropriate defense mechanisms. One of these defense mechanisms is precisely negative alliesthesia, avoiding excessive consumption.

Are you claiming, GCB, that cassia fistula contains no higher level of toxins than any other plant food, and no toxins to which humans aren't highly adapted over millions of years? You're aware that grains, legumes and nightshades contain toxins that research indicates are problematic for humans in the long term when consumed regularly and that most people don't even know these foods are causing them problems, right?

Instinct just avoids any regular consumption of a plant whose toxic substances could have a negative impact. The experience seems to have always confirmed that. However, adequate amounts of plants containing so-called toxics may be part of the environment’s elements necessary to health. That's what I think of cassia fistula: it’s a plant like any other, except that it contains substances that are particularly important to address not only gut transit, but all kinds of functions, as you can see from documents listed under the following links.

I'm not claiming that cassia fistula is poisonous or anything extreme like that. I'm just seeking a less toxic alternative. Are you trying to say that there's nothing less toxic that helps with constipation than cassia fistula? It would also help if the food remedy were sold locally.

In my opinion there’s no need to search for less toxic: substances deemed toxic (which actually are at high doses) are probably the ones that play the most important role for health. The right solution is not to avoid them, but to dose them correctly. However, it would indeed be desirable to find local produce having the same virtues. I have unfortunately never found any. This deficiency in the local array would also be a reason to think that our bodies are better adapted to tropical climates, where lacks neither cassia nor the fruit best suited to the human palate such as coconut, durian, jackfruit, cempedak, safu, papaya, mango, custard apple, longan, rambutan... the list is long and far more pleasant than the colder climate fruits range.

I am astounded by the general way of thinking about a natural product, as for example cassia fistula.

How may the fact that it contains toxic substances make it noxious at correct doses? Yet it is quite clear that a substance is toxic only by its dose, and that small doses of toxics may be beneficial (this applies to all drugs). The question is the dosage of cassia, not cassia itself.

Since the needs and potentials of the body vary from one individual to another and from a moment to another, any prescribed amount from whatever beliefs or knowledge is inherently inconsistent. We find here again the famous fallacy of taking into account a statistical value (a need or tolerance calculated by averaging) and applying it to a particular case.

I never get tired of repeating that the only way to find the dose corresponding to an individual at a given time is to know how to listen to the body, so to obey the signals of the senses. Experience shows that this method works extremely reliably, much better than what any dietary or toxicological reasoning style (valid only for population's averages) can achieve. The calculations which can be done are interesting and relevant when it comes to general reasoning, but the individual needs and potentials vary in such proportions that rely on average values is purely illusory. That might make sense if one calculates the average dose in the long term, but there are people who can’t stand a foodstuff for years or even decades and suddenly need it, and conversely, people in need of this food for years but suddenly no longer stand it.

Force oneself to eat that food, or prohibit oneself to eat it, or limit the doses based on a calculation is in most cases wide of the mark. To have the mind constantly occupied with numbers and fears complicates matters even more, whereas if one knows how to listen to his or her body, the problem resolves spontaneously and with so much more accuracy. This provided the sensory perceptions are not distorted with blends or seasoning, because experience shows that the senses work reliably with natural flavors only, so with food consumed such as nature provides.

It is therefore quite pointless to worry about the contents of anthraquinones or other natural molecule: it is better practice to listen to our body signals - which is actually not always easy because one needs to know to keep the mental anguish quiet and to allow the body to do its own choices, happily ever sanctioned by the pleasure.

 Sorry PaleoPhil, perhaps a moderator could be willing to transfert this discussion about cassia somewhere else ?

Is it true that Ames found or claimed citric acid to be cancerogenic? Gcb, was this a write error?

No, this is not an error. The article in which he stated that was printed in the 70s and it shocked me by the confusion between the effect of the component alone and effect of the natural product consumed whole. This for several reasons: because the bacteria are certainly not adapted to survival in an environment of citric acid diluted in a substrate other than citrus or other natural environment containing citric acid; and because we must not overlook the fact that the instinct could limit the intake of lemon (or citrus) before the dose of citric acid becomes harmful.

There’s in fact exactly the same kind of bias in the Ames’logic exposed in the papers linked by Alphagruis. Consuming plants containing natural pesticides has not necessarily the same effect as extracting these pesticides and administer them separately. This for two reasons: they don’t have the same effect when taken in the overall context of the plant where all kinds of other substances may play a "protector" role and the consumption of the plant as a whole and without alteration is limited by alliesthesic mechanisms, so that the toxic dose is also limited. The toxicity observed by Ames is the result of the product insulation: just one of the process prohibited under instincto framework.

I remember instinctive eater´s recommendation to force the cassia intake and to eat as much cassia as possible (i. e. up to the instinctive stop), even if one does not really like the cassia. So this is (or was) not originally your recommendation, gcb?

There is clearly a confusion with a principle having proven necessary in certain specific circumstances: in case someone feels consistently blocked to some particular food, it proved useful to force disgust or unpleasant flavor and ABSORB occasionally a little bit of cassia fistula to cause a slight shock and break the deadlock. On the other hand, it has been shown useful to regularly TEST the cassia smell, since it may sometimes be necessary – probably because we should have a greater diversity of foodstuff and healing herbs.

But do not confuse ingesting and testing, something your instincto guy (I would like to know his name, by personal message) seems to have done.

It’s true that the quantities of cassia consumed instinctively have sometimes been amazing: while a few slices are usually sufficient to reduce chronic constipation, I saw a person with multiple sclerosis swallowing the content of 15 whole sticks, without this causing any diarrhea nor discomfort but just the desired laxative effect. Subsequently, she could not eat more than a few slices before reaching the alliesthesic stop. These extreme cases of apparently excessive doses followed by beneficial outcomes convinced me that the dietary concept of "reasonable quantities", or "balanced diet" are meaningless because of the enormous variability of actual needs, especially when you are in the presence of major diseases.